


Strange Ways

by mukur0



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Mild Gore, References to Norse Religion & Lore, thalassophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26995237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mukur0/pseuds/mukur0
Summary: Oil rigs on the Gulf Coast aren't supposed to be empty, and sat phones aren't supposed to lose signal. But the Winchesters are never lucky.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 23
Collections: Supernatural Eldritch Bang





	Strange Ways

**Author's Note:**

> Finally, posting date for the 2020 Eldritch Bang! I haven't posted in awhile, so maybe someone will remember me.  
> Big, big thanks to [amberdreams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26994886) for AMAZING art. Seriously. I can't believe how incredible it is. Please appreciate her.  
> And much gratitude to [monicawoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe) for a thorough beta that caught all my weak spots.

1.

“Who the hell started naming these rigs, anyway? _Edith? Deepwater Horizon?_ They either sound like some old dude’s fishing boat or Elon Musk startups, no in-between.” 

Sam huffed a half-hearted chuckle, wiggling his hands in his pockets as if the denim could rub the cold out of his fingertips. Was it supposed to be this chilly on the Gulf Coast? “Hey, is that...am I seeing my _breath?”_

One foot still in the helicopter, Dean hesitated and blew into the air before making a face. The pilot gestured for him to continue out of the craft, earning a middle finger as he lugged his duffel bag over his shoulder and they cleared the landing pad. “Isn’t it supposed to be, like, tropical down here?” he muttered, barely heard before the helicopter was whirring back to life and preparing for liftoff. Damn, that guy was in a hurry. 

Not that they could really blame him. Sam watched with a frown as the blades picked up speed and the aircraft began to rise, moving a little faster than he really thought it should to clear the platform and put them in its rearview mirror. Soon enough it was just a soft whir in the distance, and then nothing at all, along with their only immediate link to land. They shared an uneasy look. 

“Alright,” Dean sighed, “let’s get the lay of the place, see if we can find Guthrie. If we’re lucky he just dropped his sat phone.”

Like they were ever lucky.

The platform didn’t exactly sway; it couldn’t really be said to be moving at all. It had the unsteady feeling of the upper floor of a busy building, the awareness that they were suspended a hundred feet over the water held right in their soles, with another six thousand to the bottom of the ocean. How a behemoth like this could float was beyond either of them, the way it jutted up from the water like the four legs of some massive, forgotten dinosaur, body made of multiple stories of cement and metal. Sam would almost call it Lovecraftian.

It had taken Dean hours to decide to come out here, and that was as long as the helicopter stayed low enough to jump into the water (until they had to ascend to the landing pad). Sam had to guess that the rig itself didn’t help anything, either, because his brother was looking a little green around the gills. With the mental note to pay a little extra attention to Dean as they explored, he retrieved a pistol and a flashlight and headed for the first stairs he saw.

“There’s supposed to be...how many? 198 people here?” Dean grimaced at the empty deck, giving all the windows they could see from the landing pad a glance before he took his spot at a nearby stairwell. “You’d think if there was some kind of disaster there’d be _something.”_

 _Tell me about it._ There were several industrial floors below them, smaller areas that only took up a third the width of the oil platform. All were empty, full of columns but no walls, easy to glance through without ever leaving the stairs. The breeze felt chillier the further down they went, till Sam pulled the collar of his flannel up around his neck and wished he’d brought a jacket. A curious look said Dean had done the same. 

On the stern, jutting out from the concrete and steel, sat the peculiar room they were after. The lights were off, the window-ringed room somehow a little too shadowy for the position of the sun. Even with the daylight Sam had to resist the urge to shine his flashlight around, frowning thoughtfully at the off position of every radio switch they could find. No one had made a mayday attempt, at least not from here. Was it him or was it a little too dusty? 

“Salt,” Dean said, invading his thoughts. Right. He nodded and they continued their way out and down.

On the top deck, sandwiched between two taller structures, they paused to eye the maw of the rig. It stretched wide, defended only by rusted metal fences, dwarfed by the gravity of the giant hole in the structure. Cranes held silent vigil above, massive hooks swaying as if they were as drawn by the drill as the Winchesters, holding onto the dividers with both hands as they stared down at a pipe as big around as a man, descending down almost a hundred feet and finally disappearing into a solid layer of choppy waters to continue thousands of meters to the seafloor and even further. Something in Sam’s stomach did a flip. 

“What was it Guthrie said?” Dean rubbed his hands on his jeans and then his face. “Maybe they, uh, dug something up that wasn’t oil?”

“Yeah.” Yeah, that was exactly what he’d said. 

Shaking the cold from his shoulders, Sam jerked his head at a set of double doors and took his place at one, pistol and flashlight held ready. _Three...two...one._ They swung open easily under the twin push, never locked to begin with, revealing only more cement and an unyielding dark that felt like it should be reserved to the deepest reaches below them. Where were the windows? “Christ,” Sam huffed, raising his sleeve to his nose. Dean was already taking off his flannel and wrapping it around his nose and mouth, fuck the cold. “What’s that smell?”

It wasn’t as if they were strangers to the scent of death. Certainly not to rot, or decay, or flesh that should have stopped moving a thousand years before. They knew the acrid smell of shed shapeshifter skin, the way that hair and bones burned with fossilised wood. For fuck’s sake, they knew what rugaru shit smelled like. 

This...wasn’t it. This was a fetid sensation that hit them like the heat of an open oven, accompanied instead with air that felt as if it had been frozen for months. It got down into their lungs, felt like it was anchoring itself deep in the soft tissue there with every inhale. Sam tried to cough but didn’t feel a difference. His eyes watered. 

“You think that’s...Guthrie?” he tried. Dean only cut him a look. Yeah, that wasn’t Guthrie.

At least, it wasn’t _just_ Guthrie.

There were a few stories beneath them, and then a hundred feet to the waves. Six thousand feet of nothing but dark water, and no land in sight. He hadn’t thought it would bother him so much, but now he really wished they’d paid the helicopter pilot a few thousand to stick around on the landing pad. 

Behind them was sunshine, even filtered through clouds and a fog rolling in (hadn’t the weather said it would be clear?) and before them a maze of blackness that sprawled out and down. They shared a look. Choosing to deal with the smell instead of cold, Sam nodded and twisted the head of his flashlight to widen the beam and left his shirt firmly where it was on his shoulders. It was a good thing they’d brought extra batteries. “Check in with Connie,” he whispered. Something felt like he should be whispering. “Let her know we got here. Uh…”

“Yeah,” Dean responded gravely. “If we don’t radio in twelve hours, send someone.”

He exhaled. “Yeah.”

_Yeah._

A little shifting in his duffel and Dean was pulling out the sat phone, already frowning at it. A spike of anxiety ran through Sam’s gut. “Aw, son of a bitch,” Dean hissed, smacking it in his hands. “I know I changed the batteries before we came.”

“Are you sure they were fresh?” He was already rummaging in his pack, hoping to find the right batteries. Please, have the right batteries. 

“Yes! Yes, I opened a new package! I got it at the convenience store on the way to the coast. I turned the phone on and it said it had full power. It’s...wait a second.” Dean’s grimace turned to a frown. “It’s...alright, it turned on. It says, uh, no service?”

Sam’s heel twitched on its own. “How does a satellite phone say no service?”

“I don’t _know,_ you’re the smart one!” 

“Maybe...maybe it’s the cement? Come on, try it in the open again.”

They were only two steps into the building. Dean flashed him a glare, but stepped out into the middle of the deck, where Sam followed to avoid being alone in the doorway. After several minutes of marching around, ascending and descending stairs, and holding the phone up to the sky, Dean shook his head and shoved it back in his pack. “It’s gotta be busted. There’s no way we’re out of range. There isn’t even any interference out here.”

Sam didn’t want to say it, and he sure as hell knew Dean didn’t, either. How the fuck were they going to get back if they couldn’t call for a ride? 

“Okay,” Sam sighed. “Okay. Uh, there’s probably some spare lifeboats down at the waterline. We’ll work our way down there like we were already planning, and we can use one of those. If worst comes to worst, we spend a day in a boat. Can’t be worse than anything else.”

Somehow it was already worse than anything else. Dean set his jaw, looking irritated, and motioned back towards the open doors they’d begun to enter already. With a second to brace themselves, they were on the move.

For a platform without power, it felt like it was air-conditioned. The second they breached the doorways they were again hit with the drop in temperature, now anticipating the reek but still unable to keep themselves from flinching. The inside was much like the outside―cement, metal, markings painted in fading yellow and red and green, rust dripping from water pipes that followed the way above them. Something twitched in the back of Sam’s mind. “This is all pump rooms and generators,” he murmured, sweeping their left with his light as Dean did the same with their right. It was a surprisingly tight space, all the rooms separated from each other, culminating in a miniature labyrinth of rusting technology. “We should go down, see the personal deck.”

“So they all lived on one deck?” Dean asked, shining his light at a generator looming through an open doorway. “

Sam huffed, still quiet. “Yeah. This all...keeps the rig going. And the deck above is machinery, with all the drilling equipment. Or, well, I couldn’t find a blueprint of this rig particularly, but that seems to be the standard.”

“Great. So we’re just guessing―”

_Clank._

Frozen in place, they checked the other’s expression and nodded. They didn’t know the layout well enough to try to circle around, and with the echo they couldn’t even trace the exact direction that had come from, but it was _movement,_ and that was what mattered. Both dimming their flashlights, they began to creep around more corners, thoroughly checking each room with the silent precision of a predator. Hunters, not hunted, no matter what their prey may have thought.

A shadow skidded by an open door, low to the ground and almost unheard. Dean whipped around, finger on the trigger, and nodded to Sam to enter the storage room from the other door down the hall. The only thing the light illuminated was boxes and barrels, all neatly stacked and inventoried, labels untouched, a whole shelf with rusted nuts and screws and nails―and a pair of eyes peering out at him around the corner of a box, high over his head, staring fixedly down at him ready to pounce― _"Sam!”_ and his finger tightening on the trigger, only pausing at a responding _“Wait, Dean!”_

The creature didn’t move except to turn sedately towards Sam, and the second flashlight beam had him hiss out a sigh of relief. The cat made a distinctly feline sound and hopped down a few boxes, trotting happily out of the room the way they’d come. The brothers shared a look, brows furrowed. 

“They have cats on oil rigs?” 

Sam shrugged uncomfortably, staring after the animal, which had already disappeared down the hall. “I...I guess, they’re considered good luck on ships, so maybe…? That was a pretty big cat, like, a Maine coon? It’s lucky you aren’t sneezing.”

“Whatever.” Dean rubbed his nose through his flannel. “Personal deck. We can find some stairs.”

The first thing at the bottom of the stairs was a window. Together they breathed a sigh of relief, only to frown as they approached. Was that frost? Sam dragged a finger across the window pane and watched the grime clear in its path. Wasn’t this thing supposed to be in tip-top shape before the disaster was reported? Only scant light made it through the buildup and ice, leaving them again to their flashlights as they turned to the rest of the second layer of the rig. 

“Hey, is it...colder, or is it just because we’ve been down here awhile?” Sam gritted, lowering his pistol to scrub his hands in his clothes and get the blood circulating again. Dean, with his flannel over his mouth, had to be even chillier. He only shrugged and waited for the signal to continue through the structure, a shudder passing over his shoulders. 

It had to be contagious, because one worked its spasming way up Sam’s back and arms shortly after. His hackles were up, but they had been since landing on this godforsaken thing. The adrenaline was high, and the resulting flood of relief at the cat left his skin doing weird things with his goosebumps, a little tremor in the tips of his fingers. He couldn’t decide if he felt like they were being watched or were devastatingly alone. Dean’s hand was nervous on the grip of his pistol, apparently battling with the same conflicts. 

Their footsteps echoed here. Wide open, the space stretched on either side until their lights couldn’t find walls, only fading into a darkness that was becoming ever more oppressive. Sam had never thought of himself as claustrophobic before, but after this he was going to need to reconsider. The smell grew stronger with it, forcing them to pause in the middle of what he could only describe as a cavern.

“Sam,” Dean whispered. _Galley,_ said the chipping paint on a wall that he’d finally discovered. Finally.

“So we’re in...the main lobby, kind of.” Sam nodded to himself. That made sense. “I don’t know why there’s no furniture, but on this side are the kitchens and rooms and I think the engine rooms are on the other side of this big...space.” The last thing he wanted to do was cross it again, but if anything was going to hint at what had happened here, it was going to be the engine room.

The smell of rotten food left out in the kitchen, half-eaten on tables, was wretched enough to temporarily overwhelm the odor they’d been fighting since they came in. A very cursory glance around and they were quick to leave the galley behind them, doors closed solid. 

“Whatever happened was sudden,” Sam muttered. Sudden enough to leave their food and not come back for it, even the cook. “You think maybe the power went out first?”

Dean looked...a little nervous now, peering around into the dark. “I don’t know. The news said they took some of the lifeboats but were never found, but I don’t see anything here bad enough to abandon ship over. If it was a storm it was way better inside than out there...even if it is creepy as hell.”

The suites were similar. Every few rooms had a shared bath with a rusted toilet, and each a small television and bed. They weren’t anything to write home about, but they were better than a Winchester’s average stay. Cleaner, if not for the layer of grime now coating everything. The windows were all in the same shape as the one they’d seen before. Nothing was tossed around or upended, no sign of struggle, only...life. Previous life. Clothes tossed on a bed, imperfect closets, hairbrushes full of shed hair. 

On a silent agreement they began the crossing to the engine rooms, more agitated than ever. Dean pulled out the sat phone once, uselessly hopeful, and stowed it back in his bag with a grunt when it bore no fruit. They whirled at a skitter only to stare again at the cat, this time sitting and watching them calculatingly, only to give a mreowr and trot off in the same direction they were going. Did cats hang around monsters? Dogs didn’t, usually, but cats were weird. One at ease didn’t necessarily seem like an all clear sign.

“I’m going to shoot that cat,” Dean whispered, leaning in this time to speak directly over Sam’s shoulder. “It gives me the creeps.”

“All cats give you the creeps, Dean,” was Sam’s only reply, but he had to set his shoulders before he started walking. 

There were three engine rooms. “What’s the point of three engine rooms?” Dean groused, to no reply. The first was...as expected. A big room full of buttons and knobs, none of them lit, nothing out of place. The gauges were blank, the screens were dead, and the emergency glass was unbroken. Sam’s hand came away from a lever with flakes of rust. “They really did a shit job at maintaining this place. No wonder something happened.”

That twinge of concern at the back of Sam’s mind grew finally to a thought. He frowned, squatting to reconsider the metal dashboards. “Dean, they couldn’t have. This place wouldn’t have been running two weeks ago in such bad condition. It would have...collapsed, or had a blowout, or―you know, like _Deepwater Horizon_. It can’t _possibly_ have been in operation like this.”

Dean’s fingers tapped agitatedly at a gauge. “So what? We’re on the wrong rig? You can’t be serious―”

 _“No,_ no, that’s not what I’m saying at all―”

“What, this place has been abandoned for years and they just now came up with some weird mystery for the tabloids? Sam―”

“Listen to me, dammit!” The room went quiet. Sam drew a deep breath. “Dean, something’s wrong here. It’s not just the missing crew. The paint is all worn out, and the pipes are rusted, and the place is covered in a layer of dirt that shouldn’t even be able to get in the waterproof doors, and…”

“And what?”

“And you aren’t sneezing at a cat.”

Pause. “Look, Sam, I’m as glad about that as you are, but I don’t think it’s time to be celebrating.”

“No, Dean, I’m―look, something is not right here. This entire rig is fucked up with something. Maybe a, maybe it’s a haunting? Maybe the cat is just a residual?” He already knew all the holes in the theory. Every member of the rig, almost two hundred people, disappearing in a haunting without a single sign of struggle? The only thing that lined up was the cold. And come to think of it, his fingernails were going blue. On the same wavelength, Dean put his flannel back on, nose wrinkled at the smell.

“Okay,” he sighed. “We’ve got shotguns and rock salt shells. Where would bodies be?” 

Shaking his head, Dean took point on the next engine room, finding only the same. It seemed a waste of time to check the last, but they did it anyway for the sake of thoroughness, and Sam made a curious noise as something clinked beneath his shoe. He lifted a necklace up to both of their flashlight beams, thumb running over the gold chain and settling on the cross pendant hanging from it. It was flawless. 

“Not a ghost,” Dean said. 

Sam sighed. “Yeah.”

The ocean yawned wide below them.

2.

After a very creepy movie theatre walkthrough, it was finally time to descend past the personal deck and out over open water. The massive legs of the structure were spider-webbed with crosswalks between them, all arranged neatly around the oil pipe and drill that shot down the center of the platform directly to the ocean below. 

One at a time they climbed ladders down to the walkways, grimacing down at the water now a mere 60 feet below, and found their footing on the iron mesh. The amount of rust here was...concerning, to say the least. Sam kept a hold of the dividers and pocketed his flashlight, noting the way the sun was dipping distinctly towards the horizon, and leaving the bowels of the rig had done nothing to help with the chill. He was beginning to shiver. 

“What now, Sherlock?” Dean huffed. “No radio. No monster. No bodies. No _blood._ Maybe they did just jump ship and sink.”

He only got a dirty look. Yeah, because that was likely. They all just accidentally ate food laced with acid at the same time and decided to take a swim. And where was Guthrie? They hadn’t found a sign of him anywhere. 

(The water beat quietly against the base of the rig.)

“Okay. Look, uh…” Sam turned a slow 360, hoping to find lifeboats secured at the bottom of the legs, only to frown when he only saw empty hooks. Well, fuck. “Connie knows we came here and will send someone for us after, like, a day, right?”

Dean snorted. “After Guthrie? Hell no, she’ll write this place off as a death trap.”

Fair enough. They would, too. 

“It’s the Gulf Coast, it’s not like we’re in the middle of the Pacific,” he huffed. “We go back on deck and signal any passing planes, someone should see us in no time.” 

“Overnight? I don’t know about you, Sam, but I’m not so sure about setting fires on an _oil rig.”_

“Look, Dean, maybe you could have secured us a way out of here before we came, that would have been a _great_ idea―”

“Oh, now this is my fault, mister ‘let’s fly six miles off the coast of louisiana for a _hunt―’”_

They froze. There it was again, wood creaking, metal clinking across one of the rig’s columns. Pistols up, they shifted their feet to the quieter edges of the walkways and began the careful shuffle around for a better angle, both barrels pointed unwaveringly at the source of the noise. Now that he’d picked it out, Sam could hear the water lapping at something other than the rig’s floating base. It didn’t seem to be moving, but…

He frowned as he saw a bit of wood, rocking in the water. Turned to Dean and mouthed “boat?” Dean shrugged, looking as perplexed as he was, and they continued further till they were steps from rounding the column. 

Someone sneezed. They both jumped.

“Uh...Guthrie? Is that you?” Dean called. “It’s the Winchesters. Connie sent us.”

Whoever was moving on the boat went still suddenly, only to peer off the side around at them. It was definitely not Guthrie. In fact, there wasn’t much to see of them, with a scarf around the bottom half of their face and the rest bundled up tight. At least someone was prepared for the weather. “Oh! Sorry, lads, I thought the rig was abandoned.”

They shared a look. The boatman sounded normal, if very fond of whiskey and smokes. Maybe it was their lucky day after all. “Uh, yeah, it is,” Dean started, beginning to tuck away his pistol, “but see, our boat went down a ways away, and we haven’t been able to signal anybody for help...are you, uh, headed inland?”

“Aye, fishing with guns, are ye?” 

They had the grace to look abashed, but the stranger didn’t seem to be particularly put off. Did fishermen really talk like that? They began to descend the ladder around towards the boat. An old fishing trawler, small enough for one, looking like it should have been retired a quarter of a century ago, bobbed contentedly atop the surf. Sam couldn’t make out the name painted on the side before he climbed in and made way for Dean. “We, we really appreciate it. We were kind of getting nervous, being stuck on the rig…”

And the smell hadn’t gone away, either, it must have sunk into their clothing, maybe their skin. These were headed for the trash bin. Graciously, the fisherman didn’t mention it. 

“It’s alright, laddie,” he laughed. “I get it. You two’re some upstart explorers or som’n. Ghost huntin’, maybe? Ya got stuck on the famous rig.”

A flush touched his face. Dean opened his mouth to protest and Sam kicked his shin. “I...yeah. Sorry.” He scratched his neck uncomfortably. “Why were you out here? Docked to the rig, I mean. Are there a lot of fish around?”

“Here? _Oh,_ no, the fish hate these big behemoths.” The fisherman laughed, leaning across them to untie the docking rope. “No, there was a storm earlier and I took some shelter ‘ere. And lucky I did, or you two’d ha’e been flat outta luck.”

Sam had to fight not to wrinkle his nose at a whiff of himself. Or Dean, maybe. God, he was going to scrub his skin right off. Had there been a storm while they were in the rig? He hadn’t thought so, but he guessed when they were encased in cement anything was possible. “Do you, uh...come around this way often? Maybe you saw something that day, when the rig was abandoned?”

The engine started with a sputter and a quiet whirr beneath the water. It was quieter than he’d expected, so much he wouldn’t even have to raise his voice. The fisherman made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “Aw, nawh, ways I see it, they all had an appointment with Ægir and mayhaps insulted his wife. Fickle thing, the water.”

Dean was giving him a weird look. Sam could only shrug. Ægir, that sounded familiar, like mythology familiar, something he’d read about years ago before going to college and hadn’t gotten back to in the couple of years since. It seemed Scandinavian, at least, which wasn’t weird for a fisherman last he knew. “Oh, uh, I forgot―my name is Sam. This is my older brother, Dean. And you are…?”

Another look. It wasn’t worth using fake names, he didn’t think. The fisherman nodded. “A fine meeting. My name is Frithjof.”

This time he met Dean’s glance. The older jerked his chin towards the horizon, where the sun was dipping low and purple streaked across the sky, making rays through the fog that struck the boat at odd angles. He thought he saw a fish under the surface of the water where it was illuminated the brief moment before it darted away. Something made the back of his neck itch.

“Look, we really appreciate this,” Dean tried, staring at Frithjof as if there was a puzzle he was trying to solve in the back of his hood. “It was pretty damn lucky for you to be out here at the right time.” He cut a glance at the sunset again. “That fog coming in is pretty thick, you sure that we’ll get to land in this…?”

That heavy feeling in the base of his stomach was worse. Sam turned an appraising eye to the clouds above. Were they storm clouds, or were the shadows just from the sunset? The water seemed to be lapping a little more loudly against the sides of the boat, and he could swear they’d slowed down, as if the motor was straining against some new weight. A fishing trawler was meant to handle weight, right? Maybe a current was running under the surface and giving it some trouble.

Something felt heavy beneath them, a dip in the boat that he had to have imagined. It was nothing but the weather changing. Come to think of it, he hadn’t realised when his teeth started chattering. How did he not notice that?

His eyes met Dean’s. Dean’s hand twitched towards his gun, out of sight of the fisherman. How could he be so untouched by the cold? Something was wrong. They were never so lucky.

“Aye, lads,” Frithjof hummed, voice creaking with the wood of the boat, “I can’t wait to hit land. Seems like a long, long time since I’ve touched sand. Old Rán never was going to keep me forever.”

Sam shook his head minutely. They had no idea how to steer themselves back to land. What were they supposed to do with no captain? They had a compass, sure, but no idea how to control the trawler, especially not with the fog rolling in. 

And what the hell did this have to do with the oil rig? Did a fishing trawler so small three men barely fit even count as a ghost ship? 

Something scraped gently against the bottom of the ship and it jerked, a tiny pull backwards against their forward motion as if they’d hit a bump. The fisherman didn’t react. 

“Um, captain,” Sam tried, wondering in the back of his mind how his voice even cut through the growing fog now as it wrapped around each of them, leaving trails where they’d moved, “do you have any idea when we’ll make land?” Surprisingly, it wasn’t the fog he had to fight against, but the creaking of the boat, the water crashing into the sides. There was no rain, but somehow the water had gone choppy, frothing around them. 

Frithjof whistled a jaunty tune. “Oh, no time at all. We’ll make the beach soon as can be, the lot of us. Rán will be right pissed.”

That again. Sam shrugged again at his brother’s questioning look, frustration mutual, and pulled out his flashlight, concerned to notice that the boat didn’t have any sort of beam. 

“I told her I’d come to her in style, ye know. But I never said I’d stay,” Frithjof laughed.

Another scrape, this time along the side. Sam tilted the flashlight and looked over the edge, shivering hard at the freezing bite of ocean spray.

Small grey shapes clung unevenly to the keel, dipping over and under the water as it churned. Barnacles, he thought, leaning a little further over the side. Just barnacles.

A face peered up icily at him from beneath the surface, all salt-eroded eyes and fish-eaten flesh drifting in the current. 

He scrambled back, already calling Dean’s name. Fingers. They were fingers, hundreds of fingers, all holding tightly to the boat. “It’s―it’s _them,_ Dean, fuck, it’s the rig workers―”

The fisherman didn’t stop whistling in his captain’s chair.

“That’s not possible, Sam, there were hundreds of people on that rig―”

Two flashlights aimed in the wake of the boat barely managed to penetrate the fog, but they could barely make out the long, churning string of bobbing _something_ under the water following after them. Were they chained to the boat, all holding on in a long rope dragging them back? Were they trying to capsize them?

No. No, they were just...being pulled. 

Across the ocean.

_To land._

“Those aren’t zombies, Sam,” Dean whispered.

The whistling stopped, but only so the fisherman could laugh. “O’ course not. They’re _draugr,_ lad. Sea _draugr._ Escortin’ you fellas, we can finally go home.”

The wind knocked out of Sam like he’d been punched. He couldn’t remember too much, not nearly enough, but...it made sense. “The oil rig,” he whispered. “You...you drowned them all. The necklace, you couldn’t touch the cross.” 

Delighted, the _draug_ nodded. He didn’t so much as look back at them. “Aye, boy. Rán thought she’d take me a long, long time ago, and she did, but finally I found more people out at sea. With a pair o’ the living I can find my way back.” 

_We can’t kill almost two hundred of them,_ they knew that with a glance. Entering the water themselves, swimming, it would be a death sentence, they’d only be drowned by the monsters the rig workers had become. 

And getting the boat to land would unleash them on the shore, every last one of them. “There’s a story,” Sam whispered, “I...I think about a church. About a cemetery. Where a sea _draug_ was, um, killed by...the Christian ghosts in the cemetery?”

“I don’t know about you,” Dean hissed back, “but I’d rather not raise any more spirits to add to this mess.”

“Yeah, I know, I…” Sam’s fingers tapped agitatedly on his jeans and he had to shove them back into his pockets fast before the cold froze them too tight to move. There was the question of if they’d freeze to death before even reaching land. “I don’t think we have...any options, Dean.”

Dean had huddled up beside him, pressing close for warmth. He hadn’t even noticed. “We have to get to land,” he muttered. “Then we...we alert any hunters in the area. We can’t just wander around out here and wait to die so they don’t get to shore.”

The fisherman was whistling again. It sounded a lot more eerie knowing he was dead.

“So we just wait until we hit land and hope they don’t kill us right there,” Sam finished. His teeth chattered too hard. It was getting difficult to have a conversation. The boat bumped and scraped and he was nauseous to know what had touched the keel with only inches of wood beneath his feet, and thousands of feet of water beneath. 

“If we’re lucky some sharks will swarm,” Dean snorted, “take out some of them.”

They were never lucky.

The fog seemed denser. No, darker. No, that was his vision. Sam huddled in the base of the boat, pressed against Dean’s side. 

“We...we gotta.” Gotta what, again? Gotta get warm. Right. He didn’t bring any hand warmers because it was the fucking Gulf Coast. Dean fumbled for some matches and spilled them across the hull. “Gotta. Uh. Gotta…”

3.

He woke up still huddled in the boat. The movement had stopped. The fog had lifted, and it was a clear, warm Gulf Coast night. He slapped at a mosquito.

“Dean?” His voice sounded a little weird. Cottony. His mouth felt cottony, too. Dean shifted and made the same moan when he didn’t want to get up in the morning, but his eyes cracked open and after a moment of confusion he levered himself up and looked around with the same bewilderment that Sam felt. 

“We...where are we?”

Sam gulped. His throat felt like sandpaper. “I...I think we’re on land.”

“Fuck.” Dean stood and almost overbalanced as the boat tipped on uneven sand. It creaked as though it would give way any moment, so they scrambled out and fumbled for flashlights that only showed a hunk of rusted metal and rotted wood. “That never should have stayed on top of the water.”

A chill ran down Sam’s spine, but the night remained balmy. He pulled off his flannel and used it to wipe sweat from his face. “They’re...all gone, aren’t they?”

Moonlight was all they needed to see the sand upturned in the upheaval of a slow stampede starting at the water and headed towards the road. Hundreds of feet had walked across the beach, and hours ago. The smell had almost begun to dissipate. 

Together they pulled their bags from the boat, leaving the dropped matches, and began a slow hike up the same way. The phones had service again, so a few calls to relevant hunters were made. Connie cried about Guthrie. If they guessed right, she’d probably be seeing him again soon. 

“A hundred ninety-eight _draugr_ , huh,” Sam muttered, staring down at the screen of his phone as if it could give him answers. 

“Ninety-nine with Guthrie, and two hundred with that fisherman. On land because of us,” Dean agreed.

There was going to be a lot of blood.


End file.
